


Fire meeting

by 221_french_bee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Johnlock Fluff, Love at First Sight, M/M, Smut, Student John, Student Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221_french_bee/pseuds/221_french_bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a middle of an experiment, Sherlock is driven out by Mrs Hudson as the building is threatened by a fire.<br/>Gathered on the street with his neighbors, he meet a blond man, more interesting that it seems. And this blond man seems to have heard about him...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire meeting

**Author's Note:**

> A student!Sherlock and student!John for my first post. I hope you'll enjoy it!  
> Thanks to the amazing CommunionNimrod for her support and beta reading!

Sherlock repressed a shiver, shifting on the high chair in front of his microscope. His kitchen was uncomfortably cold, but he had to maintain low heat and a high level of humidity to study the mould he was working on in optimum conditions.  
He sat up straighter to write in his notebook his observations: The evolution of his experiment and the current time, which was 2 am.  
He was looking back in his microscope when Mrs. Hudson barged into his kitchen.

“Sherlock, what are you doing? We need to get out!”

The young man sighed while glaring at the old lady. Mrs. Hudson had the apartment right under his. They had met when his toilet bowl had overflown and flooded her kitchen (apparently trying to get rid of a soiled mix of bones and feathers of dove by flushing the toilet was bad for the piping). The old widow had immediately grown fond of the young chemist student, and decided that he needed mothering. She had a bothersome obsession with food, dusting, and the general sanitary state of his flat, but she supplied excellent weed on occasion, so it wasn't that insufferable. Most of the time, anyway.

“Not now, Mrs. Hudson” he dismissed. “This experiment needs constant monitoring. You can’t come here and-“

But the old lady was restless, waving her hand in front of her nightie in a hurried motion.

“But Sherlock, haven’t you heard the alarm? There is a fire!”

The young man looked back at his experiment.

“Impossible, I'm working on damps tonight, nothing inflammable.”

“Oh, not you this time, dear! I think it comes from one of the higher flats. But we need to get out! The firefighters are evacuating the whole building”.

Sherlock reluctantly got up, following her as she stepped out of his flat. She was already leading him down the stairs, toward the entrance of the building. On his way down, Sherlock crossed paths with a firefighter: a heavily-equipped woman knocking on every door on the floor. A powerful smell of burning was already filling the corridors.  
Halfway down the stairs, Sherlock realized that he was still dressed in the dark pristine costume he usually wore during the day.  
He was also wearing the ridiculous slippers Lestrade had given him for Christmas. His brother’s boyfriend had a terrible sense of humor, and after Mummy Holmes had shared Sherlock's childhood infatuation with bees during a family dinner, the constable had gifted the young man with bee-shaped slippers as a joke. Sherlock will never admit it but these slippers, as ridiculous as there were, were the most comfortable and warm pair he had ever had.

He sighed. Well, it was too late to go back now. More firefighters were already ushering the tenants to the other side of the street, pulling blankets on the shoulder of the one, raised in hurry out of their beds, were only wearing light pajamas.  
Mrs. Hudson left his side to look for Mrs. Turner, another widower of the building, in an attempt to have more information about the whole mess. Sherlock choose to avoid the bigger group of neighbors who were talking, standing together in various states of undress. He wasn’t a very friendly person and his habits of playing violin at the wee hours of the morning hadn’t increased his popularity in the vicinity. Moreover, Mrs. Hudson had been right when she pointed out that it wasn’t his fault “this time”, as he had quite the reputation to be the one who started fires frequently with his experiments. That was why he had simply turned off his fire alarm. Maybe he owed his life to his only friendly neighbor.

He found a relatively calm spot at the side of the crowd, leaned against the showcase of a closed shop, and resolved himself to wait until the end of the firefighter intervention to go back to his experiment.  
He hadn't been standing for more than five minutes when he saw a fireman exiting the building, pullinga young man by the arms. His blond hair shined under the streetlights as he let himself be dragged outside the building with great reluctance.  
As they approached, Sherlock discerned the exasperated face of the fireman behind his helmet. He not so gently pulled the blond man over near Sherlock.

“No, sir, you can’t,” said him with the tone of a man who had repeated the same sentence for the nth time “Please, just wait here and let us do our work.”

He let go of the man’s arms and immediately got back into the building, leaving Sherlock and the blond on the pavement. The young man came to stand at Sherlock’s side, shifting restlessly.  
Sherlock took a second to look at his attire. He seemed around his age, but was a good foot shorter, his stocky body restless with energy. He was wearing jeans with the zipper open, obviously put on in hurry, and a jumper with an atrocious pattern. Sherlock didn't remember his face. The boy had to be a new tenant, then. Plain clothes, plain face, he looked as dull as any other neighbor.  
Sherlock’s attention diverted and he turned back to look at the building.

“Hi.”

The voice came from his side. Surely it was the blond boy trying to be “nice” or even “friendly”. How dull.  
Sherlock nodded wordlessly, eyes on his kitchen windows. He hoped the smoke wouldn’t come to his flat. The damps he was studying have to be maintained in very specific hydrometric and carbonate environment.

“Bit chilly out here, huh?”

This time, Sherlock turned toward the boy, sending him his most murderous glare. But the blond only smiled brightly, a humorous shine in his blue eyes.  
Intrigued, Sherlock let his eyes run along the boy’s frame. He glanced at his face, his attire, his hands, and raised an eyebrow at his deduction.  
Ok, maybe a bit interesting, then.

He realized he had been staring for too long when the boy shifted. But the blond didn’t step backwards as a lot of people did under Sherlock’s penetrative glance. Instead he raised his chin with a challenging glint in his eyes.  
Sherlock tilted his head, letting a glimpse of a smile appearing on his lips.  
Definitely interesting.

“Do you think it’s going to take long?” asked the blond boy after a moment “I’m new in this neighborhood, I don’t know the protocol here.”

Sherlock send a disinterested look at the frontage.

“I’d say an hour, maybe a bit less”.

“Sure? I've crossed path with Anderson, a guy of the 3rd floor, and he was yelling they should find us hotel rooms as the firefighters were going to spend the night here.”

Sherlock snored in disdain. “Well, Anderson is an idiot, so I'm not surprised by the ineptitude of his affirmation.”

“So you don't think it's going to take the night?” insisted the blond boy.

“Of course not. I've seen the firefighters using the carbon dioxide extinguishers, so it removes the risk of a class K fire. The heavy fog tells me it's probably a class B fire, and by the smell I'll say burned plastic. Nothing to worry about then, I'll tell that the operation should end in an hour, tops.”

“Well, ok, if you said so...”

The boy seemed dubious and Sherlock felt a pang of anger. He could hear Lestrade's voice in his head telling him to stop to showing off, but he couldn't help it. The doubtful tone only pushed him harder to show the boy that he could do much more than deduce the length of a fire operation.

“Moreover, I’d say that Anderson was surely too busy with his mistress to notice anything important.”

The blond boy blinked.  
“His mistress?”

“Yes. Isn’t it obvious?”

“Well, it’s not obvious to me.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. Why did everyone have to be this stupid? He found the frame of the man in the crowd.  
“Just look.”

The blond turned his head, following Sherlock's gaze. The dark haired man was standing a couple of feet away, a frown on his face. At his side, a dark skinned woman was rubbing her arms, trying to warm herself. She was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt, the shoulder falling low on her petite frame.

The boy raised his eyebrows. “So? I thought it was his girlfriend.”

“Well, she is not.”

The blond boy turned back at him.  
“How can you tell?”

“Her deodorant. She is wearing the same as his.”

“So? She wears one of his shirts too. A pretty ugly one.”  
Sherlock almost made a comment about the pot calling the kettle black, but remembered the state of his slippers, and decided not to drag conversation around the topic of ridiculous clothes.

“Precisely,” he said instead, “If she is comfortable enough in his flat to use his deodorant, she would have brought a change of clothes, or left some in his drawers. So, she is comfortable but tries to stay unnoticed: mistress it is.”  
Sherlock bit his lips and purposely avoided the blond boy’s gaze. Surely, he was already starting to piss him off. People never liked his deductions about infidelity, even when it wasn’t directed toward them.

“That was brilliant.”

The boy’s words took a moment to reach his mind. Sherlock turned toward the blond with an incredulous face.

“Do you think so?”

“Yeah!” the exclamation was completely sincere “you’ve really guessed that only from her shirt and deodorant?”

“I don’t guess, I observe.”

“Well, anyway, that’s amazing.”

Sherlock detailed the boy’s face, trying to discern suspicion or malice, but he only saw honest astonishment, with a hint of interest.

“Can you do me?” the boy laughed with a light blush on his face, “I mean, can you deduce me?”

Sherlock took a second to gather his thoughts before charging in one go:

“I can tell that you have been living in London for some time, but your family comes from Scotland. You are conscious about your heritage, but more because of the poor state of your family finances than the geographic localization. I also know that you’ve played rugby for some time, but stopped to focus on your medical studies. An understandable choice of career as you have a serious knight-on-the-white-horse complex, doubled by a craving for adrenaline. I’ll end by saying that hiding your homosexuality is actually a good idea as the neighborhood isn’t actually gay friendly.”

The blond boy stayed stunned for a moment.

“How can … Who had told you… How can you possibly know that?” he sputtered.

“You accent is currently Londoner, but your Scottish accent had slipped in on some words. So you’ve been living in London for enough time to have picked up the accent, but not enough to completely override your native one. The second hand clothes tell me about the state of your finances and indicate a poor background. You have a will to erase your accent, but you aren’t shy to say that you don’t come from here, so you are conscious that your accent will reveal your poor background more than your geographic origin.  
Your rugby days are obvious by the state of your ears and the width of your shoulders. But I can’t detect any new injuries or stiffness in your movements; you’ve abandoned rugby, then.  
Your hands are thoroughly clean, your nails are cut short but with calluses on your digits indicating a lot of writing. Clean hands, lots of writing and a knight-on-the-white-horse complex? Medical studies.”

“'knight-on-the-white-horse complex'?” echoed the boy.

Sherlock waved his hand in the direction of the boy's body, indicating the mess in his attire.

“When the fire alarm started you obviously put your clothes on in a hurry, but stayed inside the building in order to help, long enough that the fireman had to pull you away for you own safety. You have been restless since then, indicating a will to go back. You want to help, even by neglecting your own safety, indicating you’re adrenalin junky, if I had to say.  
What is left? Yes, sexual identity. Well, it's quite clear when you look at your attitude: prolonged silence makes you uncomfortable, but not another man checking you out, and neither did you dismiss the obvious innuendo: homosexual then.”  
Sherlock stopped and took a short pause before asking.  
“Did I guess anything wrong?”

The boy stayed agape before spluttering.

“Bisexual”

“Sorry, what?”

“I’m… I’m bisexual, in fact. But for the rest yeah, everything is true.”  
Sherlock was waiting for the usual reaction: threats, swearing, or even a punch, but the boy only looked at him in awe, mouth open. To his horror, Sherlock felt himself blushing. He was so used to be told to “piss of” that he was unable to proceed in front of this obvious display of admiration.  
Both engrossed with each other, they didn't hear the fireman coming back, and the man had to clear his throat a couple of time before catching their attention.

"Gentlemen, the situation is almost cleared. You’ll soon be able to go back into your flats.”

They thanked him and watched him go to inform the other tenants. An awkward silence fell between them, and neither boy moved to go back to the entrance of the flats. They kept standing, both incapable of looking back at the other.  
Sherlock was frozen on the spot, trying to understand his attitude as much at the boy's.

It was unusual for him to be surprised by anything or anyone, and even more to stay interested in a person after he had deduced them. But the boy had not only kept his calm under his deduction, but had also expressed a genuine amazement. It was definitely a situation that he had rarely encountered, aside from Lestrade, maybe.

But contrary to Lestrade's remarks, that he considered as the natural expression of a simple mind faced with his great intellect, the boy's praises had send shivers of pleasure and pride onto his body. Sherlock rarely felt attraction, and even more rarely indulged. But he felt that he wanted to learn more about this boy, if only to crack the gears of his mind.  
Sherlock felt his heart pounding in his chest. The plain looking boy was in fact a more complex puzzle than he had anticipated, and the challenge was thrilling.  
And if, judging by the tightness of his jeans around his thighs and his jumper around his arms, the boy had muscular limbs, then Sherlock had nothing to say against that.

Oblivious to Sherlock's thoughts, the blond boy was scratching his neck, looking for a new conversation topic. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of time before talking.

“You know, Mike - that’s my roommate - told me that fire evacuation was a common practice on this building. Apparently, there is a weird dude living in the 2nd floor who does extra smelly experiments and often makes things explode or burn at the middle of the night. Apparently he is a still a student, but he fancies himself as a kind of private detective. Names Shertyl or something. Ever heard of him?”

Whatever Sherlock was planning to respond with was interrupted by Mrs. Hudson appearing at his side.  
“Sherlock, they said it had been all cleared. It was coming from the 4th floor. Apparently someone had left some plastic thing too close to the stove. Anyway, we can come back home now.”  
A pregnant silence fell on the scene. Obvious of the sudden tension, Mrs. Hudson gently put his hand on the dark-haired boy's forearm.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.”  
Keeping his chin raised, Sherlock ignored the crimson cheeks and mortified face of the blond boy.  
“Have a good night.”  
He skirted around the blond boy, stepped quickly toward the building entrance, and climbed the stairs two by two, stubbornly refusing to look back.

oOoOoOoOo

The light of the mid-morning was falling on Sherlock’s form, curled into a ball on his sofa, now dressed in his dressing down.  
He had rudely brushed off Mrs. Hudson offers of tea in order to mourn about the failure of his experience: when he had reached his flat last night, the molds he was studying were dead dry, and even though he still had new ones on his fridge, next to a marmalade pot filled with thumbs, he wasn't in the mood anymore.  
He had thrown everything on the bin, then gone sulking in the bath, pulling his head under the water as long as he could. He immerged with a profound inhale, feeling very dizzy. But he was still thinking about that treatment, so he tried again and again, each time trying to stay longer under the water. He concentrated on the feeling of bubbles coming out of his mouth and nostrils, his heart pounding hard on his chest, his lungs slowly filling with carbonic gas, until his mind was blissfully blank.  
The feeling lingered for a couple of hours, before blues eyes and a bright smile were coming back to his mind, the boy’s voice echoing on his head.  
He curled even tighter on the sofa and sighed, pulling his hair in exasperation. What was the problem with him? Feeling depressed because a pretty boy had called him “weird”? Big deal, he was hearing that since he had started school, why would it be different with that one?

But the truth was, it had been different. The blond boy had looked at him with interest, stayed friendly, even after Sherlock had rudely deduced him. He had even called him brilliant.  
Sure, other people had called him brilliant before. He was a genius after all, with an IQ higher than most of the people in this country. But that boy had seemed to genuinely find him interesting. For once in his life, Sherlock had wanted things to be different.  
Sherlock let out a wry laugh. Stupid, stupid! How could he forget how easy it was to be hurt? As usual, his brother was infuriatingly right: caring was never an advantage.

He had moped on the couch all morning, and was considering getting up to retrieve his violin from his case and play some of his most depressing composition, when he heard a knock to his door.

He could have ignored it as usual, but the banging only grew louder and it was seriously pissing him off. Couldn’t they leave him alone for once in his life?

“What?” snapped him when he opened the door.

He halted immediately, gazing at his visitor. Still wearing jeans, but with a yellow jumper even more horrible that the night before, hand still raised and a surprised expression on his face, was the blond boy.

Suddenly hyper aware of his dishevelled state, curls raised in every direction thanks to his position on the couch and only wearing boxers under his dressing gown, Sherlock had a moment of panic. He brought the ends of his dressing gown in front of him to cover his chest, then remembered that it was the one with the bleach discolorations on the sleeve. Great. What a stunning second impression.

But the boy’s eyes stayed on his face, and Sherlock looked his expression morphing from stupor to determination.

“Hi. Um, sorry if I’m disturbing you.”

As Sherlock only stared at him popeyed, he pursued.

“Look, I think we’ve made quite a bad start. Please, let me introduce myself the proper way.” He stood up straight and Sherlock added military training as the list of his deductions. “I’m John Watson, your new neighbor from the 5th floor. I think you’ve deduced all that’s interesting about me, but I don’t know anything about you other than that you’re a student with a fondness for ultra shrill violin pieces at midnight and explosive experiments.  
I find you fascinating last night with your deduction, and I really want to make up for my stupid comment about you being weird. Just so you know, I totally said to Mike that you were amazing. And that the fire was not your fault. You didn't seem to freak out when you talked about homosexuality, so I'm hoping we're on kind of the same boat here,” he cleared his throat “So, if you have some time, I’d like to buy you a coffee. I’ve heard that the one served at the Speedy next door was drinkable. I'm pretty sure it can’t be worse than the one served in the hospital’s cafeteria.”

He even tried to smile at his pathetic joke, smiling hopefully at Sherlock. Sherlock opened his mouth, ready to ask why hadn't he already run the other way? Hadn't he already realized that Sherlock was a freak?

But what got out was:  
“Black, two sugars. I'll be downstairs in 7 minutes.”

Then he slammed the door shut.  
He immediately leaned with his back against the door, holding his breath. What was wrong with him? He was a float of words yesterday night, and now he only managed 2 sentences? If he hadn’t already convinced other boy of his insanity, his last words will surely do the job.  
Now the blond boy, John his mind supplied traitorously, will walk away, go back to his flat, never wanting again to see this weirdo of the 2nd floor.  
But what he head was John muttering:

  
“Right. Black, two sugars, ready in 7 minutes. Don’t mess that up John.”

Then Sherlock heard the sound of the steps whining when the boy stepped on the stairs. John was… he was walking downstairs. He wasn’t going back to his flat!

Sherlock leaned against the door a second more, trying to calm his frantic heartbeat. He couldn’t believe that the boy was actually on his way to buy him a coffee.  
That meant that John had wanted to find him, and so had to ask for Sherlock's flat number, because Sherlock hadn’t put his name on his door, only letting the gold 221 hang. So surely the other neighbors had been so happy to told John about his worst habits, and yet he had persevered, had found him and was now asking him for a coffee.  
And Sherlock was aware of the real meaning behind that term. It was too soon to talk about a date, but it certainly was an opening for more.

Sherlock took a deep breath. Molly, a university comrade, was always saying that he was sexy in his purple shirt. No time like the present to test that theory.

He hurried to his bedroom. Downstairs, John Watson was waiting.


End file.
